Vive L'Empereur: The Third French Empire - a National France Kaiserreich AAR

Advances in France

Close on the heels of the Liberation of Paris came victories for the French army in the areas around the towns of Chateaux Thierry and Belfort, with Napoleon IV’s troops following hot on the heels of Reichsheer as they steadily fell back towards Germany itself.


These victories were followed almost immediately by an armoured offensive into undefended western Flanders and Wallonia, with French tanks bursting through the gap between the lines of the remaining Royal French forces in Pas-de-Calais and the northern flank of the German army in Rheims.


While this offensive was forced to halt outside well-defended Bruxelles, prongs of the offensive were able to reach Namur and the river Meuse as well as the small sea side town of Dunkerque, trapping the remnants of the Royal French forces in an immense pocket stretching from Calais to Dieppe at the same time as a major French offensive was nearing the point of liberating Rheims.


Seemingly unstoppable, the French victories continued with Rheims being taken on the 17th of June and Sedan, site of the downfall of the Second French Empire, being taken on the 18th. And to those looking at the maps of the front lines on the 19th it was clear beyond a shadow of the doubt that the German goliath, while still mighty, was reeling in the saddle from the League onslaught and might fall completely in the near future.


But nor was everything going in favour of the League - as evidenced by the turn of events in the Middle East where, thanks to neglect by all but a Portugese expeditionary force, Persia had been almost entirely overrun by a Ukrainian offensive launched via the steppes of Central Asia.

H.Appleby said:

Go Ukraine!

In any event, what's going on in Scotland?

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Well you can just about see it in that penultimate screenshot - almost all of Scotland has been "liberated" and there are maybe one or two provinces at most left in German hands. Truth be told, I haven't really focused much on it because it's such a foregone conclusion. I'll try and mention it in an update when the whole Scottish campaign is complete though.

Verdun, Colons and the Rhine

Following the successive victories in France, the French army broadly halted movements for three days in order to consolidate its gains and to prepare for two major offensives which would be launched on the 21st of June.

One offensive focused on the Royal French held town of Dieppe while the second focussed on the liberation of Verdun - scene of Marshal Petain’s defiant stand against the Germans in the First Weltkrieg in a bloody battle of attrition.


Verdun was liberated in less than a day and when one of the new Marshals of the Empire, Alphonse Juin, entered the city with his First Army he was accompanied by Marshal Petain himself who, according to eye witness accounts, wept as he led a small ceremonial raising of the imperial standard at the war cemetery that held the remains of the 150,000 soldiers killed in the 1916 and 1919 Battles of Verdun.


With Verdun in French hands the French Empire now found itself along the official border of Germany itself and, through the Arlon salient, was able to bring pressure to bear on the Longwy section of the mighty fortifications which had withstood the Communards during the Second Weltkrieg but which were now crumbling in the face of the advance of imperial France.


However, elsewhere on the front France was also suffering defeats. The lone division of cavalry tasked with preventing the Royal French and Flander-Wallonians from joining up was slowly wilting in the face of relentless attacks from both east and west, finding that its light tanks could only cover a limited amount of ground on such a long perimeter.


And on the evening of the 23rd of June the colons-composed division of cavalry holding Namur was forced to retreat from the city after suffering horrendous casualties (nearly 70% killed or wounded) defending it single handed after requests for reinforcements had been repeatedly denied by the high command.


But while this defeat in many ways highlighted the racism present within the French military, for this was not the only time that units composed of colons (French colonial subjects) would be left without supplies or reinforcements while white French units alongside them received full support, it also shows how the seeds of modern French society were sown. For across France troops of different races were fighting together against the same enemy while, at the same time, colonial manpower had been tapped to keep the factories of southern France running - sowing the seeds of a common camaraderie that would, in the decades after the war, act as the foundation for the dramatic evolution of racial attitudes in the French Empire.

This does not change the fact, however, that at Namurs and on many other occasions, non-white soldiers were seen as far more expendable by the French military than white ones and, while it is impossible to calculate the exact number of soldiers killed through lack of adequate support based in racism, conservative estimates put the number at a minimum of two thousand.


Despite this waste of life, the general forward momentum of the French offensive was not slowed and the militarily significant fall of Longwy to the French was turned into one of the greatest victories of the war by French propaganda which lauded it as the first step towards the reclaiming of the whole of Alsace-Lorraine.

At the same time as Longwy had been taken, a small Spanish force had successfully broken through German lines along the border with Switzerland and reached the Rhine itself, only to find several intact crossings that were completely undefended. While poor communications would prevent the Spanish commanders on the ground from informing their superiors of the opportunity for a while (the story goes that, with their few radios all non-functional, a bicycle was commandeered and a soldier was forced to cycle back with the news), it marked one of the most significant military opportunities in the war.


While this was not yet known by the French high command, they themselves soon had cause to celebrate an even greater victory than Longwy when General Delestraint finally took Dieppe after a week of bitter fighting.


This in turn was to prove the blow that would finally break Royal France. Upon their arrival in Amiens the soldiers retreated from Dieppe heard (accurate) rumours that Dunkirk was in Imperial French hands and that there were no ships left in Calais capable of conducting an evacuation. Unsurprisingly this caused already low morale to fall even further and this was compounded by what was left of the Royal French government issuing orders for a last stand in Amiens with soldiers ordered to fight to the death for their king.

Instead of following these orders, soldiers argued with their officers and, after threats of court martials were issued, mutinied and took up arms against their former commanders. In the course of just under an hour the mutinying soldiers seized control of the city of Amiens from the very small number of remaining diehards loyal to the cause of Royal France.

And so it was that on the 29th of June that General Delestraint was informed of a car waving a white flag approaching Dieppe, a car that would turn out to contain a messenger bringing the unconditional surrender of Royal France.

500Artichoke said:

YES! The humiliations have been redeemed.

... but not avenged! Into the black heart of the German Empire we ride! Well, uh... what's left of it, anyway.

The explanations of the racism and the surprising Spanish success are pretty cool. Um, were they your way of explaining strategic mistakes?

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Well Namur was more just a sacrifice I was willing to make since I didn't need to hold it but I hadn't counted on how badly the unit would be mauled (actually, all my cavalry divisions ended up suffering massive casualties in this war).

And yeah, with the Spanish I had no idea what they were doing and then suddenly they'd reached the Rhine and there was no one on the other side - but it took me about a day in game to notice that they'd done it, at which point I grabbed everything I could and, well, you'll see in the next update...

But with both of them I just decided to try and use them as opportunities to add more colour to the AAR.